Magazine evaluation

AS MEDIA UNIT G321AS MEDIA UNIT G321

PRELIMINARY TASKPRELIMINARY TASK

COVER AND CONTENTS COVER AND CONTENTS OF A COLLEGE OF A COLLEGE

MAGAZINEMAGAZINE

PRELIMINARY TASKPRELIMINARY TASKEVALUATION EXAMPLEEVALUATION EXAMPLE

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or 1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

2. What have you learnt about the technologies from the 2. What have you learnt about the technologies from the process process of constructing this product?of constructing this product?

In what ways does your media product use, develop or In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media challenge forms and conventions of real media

products?products?

The Front Cover And Its SimilaritiesThe Front Cover And Its Similarities

Masthead

Cover Lines

Dominant Image [rule of thirds] & Plain background

Barcode/price/website

Differences within the front coverDifferences within the front coverThe two covers differ in audience readers, as my own magazine is to do with college lifestyle and has a student as its from cover model, whereas the ‘Red’ magazine is more celebrity based and has celebrities as its front cover model.The use of different colours was also used to attract all types of readers, wit any gender and age. Both magazines used different colours too as they both have different target audiences.I have used a male student

for my front cover shot which is also a medium close up. He is there to show a representation of the college. However the other magazine is more style based so it has a long shot to show the whole image of the two celebrities which represent the ‘Red’ celebrity lifestyle.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media

products? CONTENTS PAGE

Has contents printed in bold and appealing format to clearly show the purpose

Highlights front cover features.

Mine uses three images whereas vibe has one single image

Layout out of columns for features within the magazine and categorised.

Use of colours, my magazine has many colours used, whereas vibe only really has one colour which is the red poppy.

My contents page doesn't look as professional and elegant as vibes content page, the use of photos and colours in mine looks pretty random whereas vibes looks well planned and laid out.

Additionally my cover has a lot of dead space and unused parts whereas vibe have made good use of all the space on the page and covering it with conventions.

What have you learnt about the What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of technologies from the process of constructing this productconstructing this product

I used a digital camera to get the shots I needed, such as close up, medium close up and long shots for my front cover and contents page.

Using Moodle to get resources and guidelines of what I needed to do for my preliminary task, so using internet access was a process used to construct my magazine.

I also learnt how to use adobe Photoshop to construct and edit my images along with texts and other conventions to form a front cover for my student magazine.

Finally I used Adobe InDesign to finalise my contents page and to create my contents page while importing my front cover here to make the two pieces of work saved on one file.

I used a digital camera to take a medium close up shot of I used a digital camera to take a medium close up shot of a student in my class and this image dominated the lower a student in my class and this image dominated the lower and left third of my front cover. I could of moved the and left third of my front cover. I could of moved the image to the right and changed the position of the cover image to the right and changed the position of the cover lines on the left by making them change position with my lines on the left by making them change position with my model but I chose not to. I had to ensure that my model model but I chose not to. I had to ensure that my model was in the correct pose and had a suitable background for was in the correct pose and had a suitable background for the image to be taken as it was for the front cover and the image to be taken as it was for the front cover and had to have an appeal factor about it.had to have an appeal factor about it.

I used Adobe Photoshop to edit a student in my class to make them look like the model of my front cover for the student magazine.

This shows how I used Adobe to manipulate my images, and one of my stages of development. As you can see:

• As you can see my model is slightly edited as I cropped out some parts of the photo for it to fit in the category as a medium close up.

• Additionally I edited the font and got the best I could out of adobe as a beginner for making unique designs that were used as part of my mast head and normal written font.

I kept the main title ‘Contents’ at the top and I tried my best to make sure the contents page used the same colours as my front cover.

I think the layout of the contents page was overall pretty good. Yes there was factors of it that could have been improved such as some of the dead space it has or more features that could have been used to make it stand out a bit more. Personally I think it would be a bit boring for my target audience too as there isn't any factors or aspects of the contents page that would attract them and make them want to read on as it looks ordinary and pretty straight forward.

I did use columns and I think I used text quite well. I also experimented with colour to add variation. I think Indesign was quite hard to use because I’ve never thought about the design/layout of a page before and this has helped me to understand how important this is for my future main task which will need me to practice and make the most of InDesign. More to this I also used InDesign to import my front cover to the file that holds my contents page so it looks like a double page file now.